NYCLU on Mayor Adams’s Blueprint to End Gun Violence
NEW YORK CITY – Ahead of today’s City Council oversight hearing on Mayor Adams’s blueprint to end gun violence, New York Civil Liberties Union senior policy counsel Michael Sisitzky issued the following statement:
“Mayor Adams is doubling down on failed, racist broken-windows and stop-and-frisk policies that all New Yorkers know do nothing except devastate Black and Brown communities. The Mayor’s plan is filled to the brim with fear-based misunderstandings of what keeps communities safe. New Yorkers will not be fear-mongered by law enforcement and the politicians in their pockets into conflating bail reform with a rise in gun violence.
“The safest communities are the ones with the most resources, not the highest jail populations. The most supported communities are the ones with clinical support for people in crisis, not the ones where law enforcement institutionalize people by force. The most secure communities are the ones with the strongest safety nets, not new plainclothes NYPD units who have historically brought nothing short of aggressive and disparate policing to neighborhoods across our city.
“Elected officials have for generations chosen to starve communities of the resources needed to thrive by choosing instead to respond with handcuffs. Mayor Adams has unabashedly followed this misguided path. New Yorkers must not be fooled.”
Learn more about the NYCLU’s campaigns to transform policing here.